Lis learned a hard lesson: look away for a moment and the thing you cherish most in this world could be . . . would be . . . snatched from you. The real beneficiary of this hard-won wisdom was Lis’s daughter, Vanessa, whom Lis had smothered with vigilance. It had taken a supreme act of will for Lis to look away as Vanessa biked up and down the block, or walked three doors down to play with her best friend, or waited for the school bus without Lis glued to her side.

Now it took that same willpower for Lis not to think about what could happen to Vanessa living in that apartment in that not-great neighborhood outside of Providence, finishing a postdoc and working god-awful hours at that sleep lab. It helped a bit when Lis reminded herself that her daughter was poised on the cusp of the kind of career that Lis hadn’t known she could dream about.

Lis tamped down the anxiety that flared whenever she thought about Vanessa. She’d texted her daughter earlier that morning, two hours ago. Two hours, that was about as long as it had taken for them to realize Janey was missing. It was all Lis could do to keep from texting Vanessa again. Poking at her until she got a response. Any response that signaled safe, for now.

Miss Sorrel tucked a wisp of her white hair into the long braid she’d coiled in a figure eight, anchored at the nape of her neck, then reached across for a sandwich, knocking over the stack. “Oh dear,” she said, her hand fluttering over the plate. She’d been like that, jumpy, since yesterday. But that was to be expected. After all, yesterday was “Remembering Day,” the anniversary of the day Janey disappeared almost forty years ago.

“Did you have a good night’s sleep?” Lis asked, handing Miss Sorrel a sandwich. “Anything bothering you, dear?”

Miss Sorrel ignored the question and nibbled off a corner of the sandwich. Then another nibble and another, daintily licking her fingers when there was none left and reaching for another sandwich. Her appetite hadn’t flagged in the slightest even as she shrank. Then she sighed heavily and settled back into the glider, briefly admiring the cameo ring she always wore. The ring was carved with the delicate figure of a slender woman wearing a semitransparent gown. It had been Lis’s grandmother’s, and it was one of the few things of her mother’s that she hoped would one day be hers.

For a few moments Lis and Miss Sorrel sat in companionable silence, broken only by the clip-clop of horses’ hooves. A horse-drawn wagon with tourists tucked in under carriage blankets moved slowly past. Miss Sorrel’s nostrils flared. That overripe barnyard smell and the curious gazes of tourists and their cameras were the price one paid for living in Bonsecours’s gracious historic district.

“Momma, should we go inside?” Lis said.